


The Wolf in the Crossroads

by Nighthearts Scraps (Nightheart)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, The Eluvian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-05 00:29:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4158705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightheart/pseuds/Nighthearts%20Scraps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the breach is sealed and Coreypheus defeated, Solas continues his ever-mission to help the People. His investigation of the remaining eluvian at the crossroads leads him to the mage most devoted to restoring the ancient lore of the eluvian and perhaps a partnership that might change the world forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An irresistible plot bunny borrowed from kmeme I had to post it here because I couldn't handle the weird formatting over there.

She had studied the intricacy that was the Eluvian for nearly a decade, unraveling bits of its workings, coming to understand parts of its magic... but never the whole. She did know this for certain; it was not one single powerful spell.

 _:It's a network of them,:_ she thought in admiration.

Each individual spell was carefully crafted with indescribable precision, and the ancient elves had somehow managed a system of weaving thousands of tiny, individual spells together into a web-like construction that was as delicate and intricate as the gossamer netting of cobwebs.

 _:Only in this case, it's not one cobweb, or even hundreds of them, there are thousands, perhaps millions of them, all interconnected in a spell that can mysteriously figure out which particular series of individual spell-webs need to fire off at any given moment._ :

Over long study, Merrill had untangled the workings of some few bits of parts of spells. Enough to get a sense for how the spell-working as a whole might work, but even with the mirror cleared of Taint, there was no-way for her to be able to reconnect all of the thousands upon thousands of tiny spider-web-like strands of individual spell-threads to their counterparts on their other sides of the cracks. Even the aruin-holm, which had shown her where the connections lay, was not enough. The whole thing most likely needed to be reforged; spell, mirror and all.

 _:I'd have to live for a thousand years in order to unravel all of the parts,:_ Merrill admitted to herself with an honesty that was excruciatingly painful to her.

It was hard, hard! For her to admit that everything she'd sacrificed, everything she'd worked for, all she'd done, was for nothing. She would never bring Tamlen back. She would never restore what her people had lost. She'd killed her Keeper, and endangered Sabrae Clan for nothing. Now she had to live with herself, live with the knowledge that she was the biggest failure ever to have walked the world, and not only that...

_:All of my good intentions, all of my audacity... nothing but pride. Willful, proud, stubborn, vanity... Stupid. Failure.:_

It was a burden that weighed heavily on her heart. That day at Pride's End... it was not one trusted adviser she'd killed that day, but two. Her beloved Keeper Marethari, a mentor she'd loved as dearly as anyone would love her own mother had chosen to save Merrill from her own choices by pulling Audacity through the fade into her mortal body "sealing it away" but the real kicker was... was that by doing so Marethari had changed the "demon" in the Fade, the Spirit of Audacity into what she perceived it should be rather than what it truly was.

 _:It had been changed long long ago, that's true. Also changed further many more successive generations since it was summoned here during my ancestors war with Tevinter, but Audacity was not wholly evil. Why would no-one listen to me when I tried to tell them that the Spirit was trapped by their perceptions of it?!:_ Merrill thought in sorrowful distress.

Audacity; the Spirit of Those Who Dare. It _could_ be taken as being proud or conceited, but it took true courage to break away from everything that had gone before, to seek out new paths rather than tamely accepting the well-worn paths of tradition. Merrill had turned away from her position of honor as First and the place that had been prepared for her; willing to do what she must, dare what she must, in order to restore what was lost. Audacity had been willing to help her because It, too sought to regain what It had lost; Its true nature. It remembered being different. Before the war with Tevinter, before the ancient elves had dragged It into this world and corrupted it to suit their own purposes, it truly been Audacity, a Spirit of Courage. Over hundreds of years the prevailing belief that it was, in fact, a demon had worn away at it bit by bit so that only a tiny kernel of its true nature remained.

When Marethari had dragged the spirit into the foul corruption of this world again, sealing it within her and forcing her perceptions onto it, her power had been too great for the last of Audacity to resist and it had become the pride demon that Marethari "knew" it must be. Merrill had killed both her mother Marethari and the poor Spirit who had needed her help that day. All because she was a failure.

 _:Just one more try,:_ she promised herself, pulling her tiny aravell-cart behind her as she stepped through the tree-line into the Brecillian Forest. _:I'll finish taking back the assembled Eluvian to the place where it all started. There might be some clue that will tell me how to reconnect the mirrors inner workings with each other there... or maybe havig the mirror alone is not enough, maybe the place where it rests offers it something it can't find anywhere else. If I take it back, and I can't get it to work, I'll give it up for good and leave it behind in its natural resting place. Creators know what i'll do after that!:_


	2. Chapter 2

The crossroads wasn't so much a place as it was a construction. It was a nexus where all of the time-space pathways bent by magic met. It took on the look of some vague, misty garden filled with row upon row of arched Eluvians mainly because that was what the original craftors of the spells had expected.

Ruling an empire that had stretched across the face of the lands currently known as Thedas and beyond, would have been impossible without adequate logistics. When Tevinter had taken over they'd made the imperial highway to connect their cities and other holdings, but in the days of arlathan, travel had been much more immediate. In his time Arlath'an had been a patchwork of territories jealously guarded by each of his fellow "gods." Each of them had had their flocks of worshipers to build and maintain their great palace-complexes, their own great warrior families to go out and spend their blood and lives in never-ending skirmishes that suited to amuse an idle, immortal class. The Eluvians had been created by himself and his brethren, and had once served both as logistical tools for the movement of good and people from place to place, and, in a way, as a way to count coups. In fact, it had been the crossroads, a non-point in space-time, a place that was not a place, that had given him that first terrible idea on how to end the tyranny imposed by his brethren by sealing them away in another such non-place, a bubble in space-time that their great powers could not affect.

_:So much for good intentions,:_ he sighed to himself.

The elf looked around him. A number of the Eluvian had become broken, either their spells disintegrated over time leaving them useless, or their physical forms shattered and lost. Still others remained sealed away, the keys to opening them inaccessible from his side f the door. Given time, and enough power, it would not be impossible for him to "pick" the locks, but it would take time. There were a few left open to him, but many of those were essentially useless. The temples they were located in were located far out of the way of any useful locations, and the buildings themselves either worn completely away by time, inhabited by dragons, or stripped of anything useful by centuries of greedy explorers.

_:A pity,:_ he thought. _:But even if it seems useless at first, that does not necessarily mean this is so.:_

If he could not free his people by one means, then he would employ another. Modern times were so strange to him. He could not understand the way these elves lived and why. He didn't understand why the elves in Tevinter allowed themselves to be enslaved; the magisters were powerful yes, ut they were not nearly as powerful as the so-called "Creators" his brethren had been. He partly understood the Dalish, they at least seemed to be trying to uphold their pride, but their so-called freedom was little more than enslavement to a past that had never existed! And the city-elves! Crammed into ghetos, spat upon, reviled and treated as a sub-class, slaughtered in their hundreds when their human overlords worried they were getting too uppity... it was like Arlathan all over again, and these elves didn't even _try_ to resist!

_:Nevermind that now,_ : he commanded himself.

It was time to change the game, time to regroup and form another plan, one that would hopefully not go so badly awry this time. As long as his people continued to suffer, as long as they were oppressed and enslaved, he would find the strength within him to fight again.

_:I can use these eluvian,:_ he thought, looking over his options and searching his memory for where all the end terminals were in ancient days, and where they might be found now.

It was then that he became aware of a strange, thrumming hum just below the audible level that thrilled his senses. Magic. He looked the various Eluvian over, trying to seek out which of them was about to be used, and his senses quickly arrowed in on one of them.

_:That's odd...:_ he mused, striding over and examining the Eluvian very closely.

It was of a similar size to many of them, the frame bearing the skull of a beast that had been dead for centuries, but while it had been alive it had been the favored pet and sometimes the chosen symbol of one of his brethren that the Dalish now called Dirthamen. It was shattered. A closer examination revealed that it had once been utterly destroyed but was now somehow peiced together, not only the shards had been puzzled back into place, but...

_:The meridians are all lined up properly!_ : he thought with a dawning sense of delight.

If the pieces had been misaligned by even the slightest degree, then the eluvian would have been useless, but somehow whoever had pieced it together had found a way to do it so that the strands were all able to be connected to their counterparts on the other edges of the shards.

_:It still might be useless,:_ he reminded himself. : _Even if I got it to work, its not good if it isn't placed somewhere with some strategic value. Now let's see if I can remember where this was...:_

If he recalled correctly, this particular eluvian belonged in one of Dirthaen's favored temple-complexes that was located at the heart of a forest in what had once been the south edge of his territory. Fen'Harel did some mental geographic juggling and at last placed it possibly in a fairly useful spot in current day Fereldan in the center of a place they now called the Brecilian forest.

_:Fereldan is friendly to the elves,:_ he thought, considering. _:Well... as friendly as anyplace in current days is. This eluvian could be useful to me. If I can get it to work again.:_

Solas examined the mirror minutely. If even one shard were missing, then there would be no hope of restoration of the spell, but if it were all there, only merely cracked... there was hope.

_:Ah... hmmm..._ : he hummed to himself.

Against all odds, there was not even a single tiny sliver of silver-glass missing from the mirror. The person who had pieced it together had even, somehow, managed to line up all of the individual tendril-like pathways on the edges of the shards with each other.

_:And **that** surely had to have been a task!_ : he thought in admiration. _:Now to see if there's anything of its inner spellweb that can be salvaged, or if I'll have to reforge the thing from scratch due to that strange foulness coming from within it.:_

The mythical Dread Wolf gently sank his ancient magic into its interior spell-web to read its workings.

_:This is--_!:

He nearly recoiled away from it as soon as his magic touched it. There was still a foul corruption still lurking within it. It was barely a trace, having been cleansed by some oter sort of magic, but it was still there, lurking at the edges. He recognized the magical feel of Taint from his contact with Corypheus and the Grey Wardens he'd come across in his work with the Inquisition.

_:And that other magic...:_

He frowned. He could sense the metallic tang of blood magic, but strangely he tasted none of its usual corruption. Whoever had used blood magic on this mirror had withstood its usual temptations to more power by using the life-essence of others as fuel, and had instead used their own. A martyr-like sense of self-sacrifice pervaded the work, which had resulted in the use of blood magic being as pure as it was possible to be. Still, whoever had done this had taken a terrible risk.

_:This eluvian was once swimming in Taint, but now only the barest traces of it remain._ :

Instead the "scent" of the magic was all a martyred blood magic, the sense of the mage behind it being a talented, inquisitive person of deeply passionate ideals and a willingness to take on whatever burdens were necessary to achieve what was right. The personality of the mirror-cleanser sang through the splintered channels of the purified spell-web.

_:This mage, in short, maybe just what I'm looking for.:_


	3. Chapter 3

Eluvian, were generally locked by a key, but there was an override, _if_ one knew the right ways to bend the inner spellwebs of the eluvian. Likewise, they could be restored in much the same way, but restoration was a useless endeavor from only one side, the intricate spells had to be accessed from both sides in order to anchor it properly. Only a master spell-weaver familiar with the intricacies of the spell-webs of the eluvian could re-cipher and reconnect the millions of individual grids into working cohesion and restore the original spells to full functionality again.

: _Fortunately for this other mage over there... I happen to be one such spell-weaver. Perhaps I am the last such.:_

It would be a challenge, with his vastly more limited capabilities, to lead an inexperienced and probably ignorant mage through the complex process of aiding him in the restoration of the eluvian's inner spell-workings. It was a challenge, however that he was willing to take up, mainly because the opportunity to gain that strategically placed eluvian was too good to pass up.

He sent his magic seeking along the magical strands of the Eluvian's inner spellweb, and burned away the last of the Taint at any place he found it. There wasn't much left, not nearly the amount that he could feel the resonant echo of in some of the larger shards. The purifying mage must have done his work very well.

: _Now that the last of the corruption is gone... let us see what is left.:_

He was accustomed to seeing the inner spellwebs of the eluvians with connections and operations firing off at certain intervals. Even dormant, they still operated, letting off small bursts of light and color swimming along moonlight-strands of it web like fiery connections in a brain. This eluvian was not even dormant; the connections were stagnant and bereft of life. The strands would all need to be re-connected and restored. He knew the original code-spell for the anchors, but it had to be anchored from _both_ sides of the mirror, as it formed the central hubs for the warp in space-time.

He felt the magic of the mage on the other side touching the mirror, seeking blindly along the cracks for a way for his magic to take purchase. The silly mage sought to use magical power to "glue" the thing back together! Solas nearly laughed. Instead, knowing he would not get another such chance, he got to work.

Gathering as much of his ancient power as his fragile shell could withstand, he shaped the seven anchor-resonances and the central nodes around which all of the rest of the spells would be woven in his mind, then wove his magic into the form, pressing it against his side of the mirror, super-imposed over the dead spell-weaving. He _pushed_ , forcing it through the folds of reality, forcing the veil between material and energy to warp and shift. After a great effort, he felt the space-time warp reach an equilibrium-point as the new spell merged with the old.

He felt the mage on the other side, clumsily seeking around the cracks of the mirror. He felt his... no, _her_ , jolt of surprise when the magic of the Eluvian must have seemed to suddenly flare to life. He felt her growing elation as she inquisitively tried to study this new wonder happening before her.

_:So then, a curious mind, and intelligent. Good. She'll need both.:_

Solas readied himself to begin a long working. They had a great deal to accomplish, and less time to do it in. Mages of modern times burned their ways through their energy reserves very quickly. They were all so sloppy, so inelegant. Likely this one would barely last an hour.

_:Or... hm... why is she?_ : he wondered a moment later when he felt her pullher magic back.

He was about to seize her to keep her from escaping, and thus ruining the working he had started, but then he felt her presence return. It was grounded now, and centered properly, making for a much more efficient and very controlled use of magic. His estimation of the unknown mage rose. Clearly, this mage knew that smaller, subtler magic was called for. He felt her carefully picking through the anchor-points and the spell-hubs that branched off from them, trying to understand them, trying to make the connections between the main nodes and all of the various strands that were still deactivated.

_:One thing at a time, da'len,:_ he mentally chided her as he very subtly used the pull of his magic to guide her to the first of the hubs, wanting her to get started on "pulling" the magical resonance through to her side of the mirror thus getting the spell to settle in place so that they could proceed.

It quickly became apparent to him that his little mage was not one to be guided. The more he tried to corral her into the task he desired her to complete, the more she resisted and slipped away. She clearly desired to look at all of the shiny anchor-points and the interesting magic going on there that she likely could not hope to replicate. Of course she did not know that she couldn't simply replicate them, so naturally she was curious. He tugged harder at her through his magic, trying to get her settled in to doing the work _he_ wanted done, while at the same time having to hold a very powerful, intricate magical working in place without damaging it... but she was having _none_ of it; like a willful child she wanted to go play with the pretty toys.

_:Honestly_!:

Solas held on to his temper and irritation, reminding himself that curiosity had its uses, it led to innovation and creativity. Her curiosity was _not_ , however, leading them to finishing the spell-web currently, and he could not hold it open indefinitely. Solas caught hold of her metaphorical wrist of her magical seeking "hands" and with gentle firmness rapped her "knuckles" with his own magic and pointed her toward her task. He felt her indignant protest as well as her puzzlement as to how an Eluvian could display so much seeming will, but obediently (still curious) investigated the direction he sent her in.

He chuckled a little bit in amusement at the little mages delight in her investigations of the first of the spell hubs. He sensed her curious mind begin to work its way through the puzzles, deciphering the first simple patterns and coming to a better understanding of how they fit into the whole. It would seem that the mage must have studied the Eluvian for a number of years, and in that time had come to a very hazy, very crude understanding of what a spellweb was and how it might function. This would have been the first time she'd ever seen a functioning one, so she needed to investigate all of the bits first.

Smiling a little to himself, and slipping back into "teacher mode" Solas subtly guided her to an empty hub, showed her how the source node fed off the main anchor at intervals, and how the ensuing function node modulated the magic into specially encoded sets of magical bursts that formed a magical language that would be read and understood by the lesser grids that were assigned to do so. She was a very fast learner, and picked things up right away.

_:Which is good, as I doubt very much I would be able to manage this with a slow or stupid pupil.:_ Solas thought.

Once her instruction on the basics was finished, Solas began "feeding" her his power through the first anchor and guided her through the process of connecting it to the seven main hubs off the anchor, enabling the first layer of resonance to click into place and the magic to come online. Once the first layer for all seven anchor points was in place it would then be a (mostly) simple matter of restoring the dormant magical web-grids still in the Eluvian to functionality again. It would be a long and onerous task, and he hoped very much the mage was up to it.

_:Most mages these days seem like that Dorian or Vivienne, all flash and power, and no appreciation for subtlety.:_

They also wore themselves out quickly. This mage however, seemed to understand that patience rather than power was what was needed for she did not waste any energy, but set herself straight to working with a serious, studious demeanor that gave him hope that this might indeed work. She did not seem to be aware of his presence, but perhaps that was because he was going out of his way to mask it and that was all to the good. If she was Dalish, there were enough awful tales of "The Dread Wold" as some sort of elven boogeyman to send her running in terror.

_:She works most efficiently,_ : he thought in approval.

She had managed to connect the seven main hubs off the first anchor in less time than he would have anticipated, leaving him to the intricate task of re-coding all of the lesser strands and their sub-grids. It was painstaking work, even with a template to work from. Added to it's inherent difficulty, the little mage kept trying to push her way in for a closer look at what he was doing, bringing all of her magical noise along with her and nearly disrupting the careful cobweb of the lesser spell-webs he was trying to work on. It was distracting and frustrating, but he couldn't find it within himself to be truly angry with her; she was clearly curious and eager to learn and deep down he could not find it in himself to hold that against her, no matter how inconvenient he currently found it.


	4. Chapter 4

_:Honestly, she's as curious as a ferret, and twice as much trouble!:_ he thought as he pushed her out of his own working, just barely managing to maintain the delicate integrity of the spellweb he was working on.

It was a lot like when he, as Solas-the-artist, had been busy with the detail-work of a painting, and along came some well-meaning amateur with a paint-brush five miles wide offering to "fill in all the holes" on his canvas! He had _plans_ for those holes! This little mage as trying to be helpful, but really she was running amok through all of his careful work.

_:Go and paint over **there** , da'len,_: he thought in exasperation as he pushed her quite insistently toward the second anchor point so she could get started on the task he wanted her working on; attuning those spell-hubs to their anchor points so that he could work on his own tasks.

She went, a trifle sulkily, but she went. Feeding power to her for her to connect the anchor-points and then attune the magical resonances of the nodes and hubs was something that was not very difficult. He did this while he simultaneously got down to the fine detail-work of re-coding the rest of the spellwebs, function nodes and sub-grids, keeping an eye on her progress absently while he worked. After attuning her third hub, the mage clearly felt that she'd gotten the hang of things and now felt she was ready to start experimenting with making some of those interesting grids he was working on.

_:No, you may **not** play with the spell-webs, da'len, these are very delicate. Go back to your work._ :

Solas sighed to himself as he pulled away from what he was working on and rapped her across the knuckles again (in the magical sense) and sent her back to her own corner. He could sense her puzzlement at how the eluvian could possibly be reprimanding her like a living thing. He let her think that the "wonders of the ancient elves of Arlathan, gloried be their names!" was responsible for it.

The mage had apparently, to his fortune, developed a curiosity to see what would happen if she attuned all of the hubs to their anchor points for she set to work with a determined seriousness that both pleased and relieved him as he no longer had to push her back to the work he wanted her doing. She quickly finished the second anchor-point, growing faster and more adept at her task as she became more familiar with the process. She started on the third anchor-point and its attached spell-hubs, but by this time he could feel her magical strength beginning to flag a bit. He expected she would take a break, leaving him to, unbeknownst to her, hold the spell up in her absence.

_:Let us hope she does not decide to call it a night, I do not know that even my magical strength is up to holding it in place uselessly for the next ten hours!:_

Instead of pulling away and resting however, he felt her magic shift. A dark metallic tang entered it, bleeding it red around the edges, more of her "soul essence" which was where the true power in blood magic came from, saturated its power. The mage on the other side of the mirror continued on with her work as though using her own spiritual essence to boost her strength was _not_ an utterly foolish thing to do.

_:Oh, da'len,:_ he thought to the stranger who used blood magic on the other side of the eluvian. : _So young, so foolish.:_

She continued on her work, unaware of him or his forming opinions of her. More spell-web hubs came online. On one hand this was a good thing as it meant their work was proceeding apace, on the other hand, the more anchors he had to feed his magic into, the more quickly it drained his own magic. Only when all seven anchors were attuned would the central spell lock in place and the spellweb as a whole stabilize. After that point he could work on the lesser grids at his own leisure but until then, keeping all of the anchors active until they could be attuned and stabilized by their surrounding hubs was magically taxing. He wished he dared urge the mage to work faster, but the last thing he needed was for her to make a mistake or add even more of her blood magic into the mix.

_:It could be dangerous that this eluvian is already saturated with her magic in the first place,:_ he thought to himself. _:She clearly cleansed it all on her own and used her own blood magic to do it. The scent of it is unmistakable now that I've got a taste of it. It could make for unpredictable consequences in the future if I am not careful.:_

Boosted by her use of blood magic, the mage on the other side of the mirror attuned the spell-web hubs surrounding the third anchor point, and then got immediately to work on the fourth one. Thankfully the curious little mage seemed to have realized that something interesting might happen if she got all of them to work, and she was eager to see what it might be, so she worked with determined efficiency. He kept an eye on her progress and re-coded a few spell-webs off the first hub while he waited for her to finish.

Halfway through the fifth spell-web, it was clear she was nearing exhaustion as her magical hold became more shaky and her touch less efficient. Still, she did not rest or pull away from her work, and it was clear to him that she had pushed herself through magical trials before and intended to do so now. More magical boosts from her personal reserves joined the first by the time she was finished with the fifth grid, causing him to worry that the magical resonances in this Eluvian might, instead of attuning in the "lock" he wished to shape, would instead gravitate naturally to the feel of the blood magic of the one who had invested so much of herself into it.

_:It may well do that anyway...:_ he thought with a frown.

The shards had clearly been cleansed by a single mage, using her blood magic to boost the spells (which seemed counter intuitive to him, but if it was stupid and it worked...). It was entirely likely that if she saturated her magical power with the spirit-essence in her blood magic while attuning the anchors, that the "key" the eluvian would form would not be the one he had programmed in, but rather would be the girl's magic itself.

_:Inconvenient, but..._ : he shrugged.

He had been dealing with a number of inconveniences lately, and this one did not seem insurmountable. If worst came to worst he knew a method that would allow him to extract a still-beating heart from the body of a person, trapping the power of thier blood and thier magic both, and sealing it away inside a vhenan'sliin mi'durgen, a heartsblood diamond, a magical vessel that would preserve the heart, thus still giving him a magical key to the eluvian without the inconvenience of a "key" that could think for itsef and decide that it might not want to do as he bid.

_:I'd rather not have to do that if I have another option,_ : he decided. : _The mage seems compliant enough, it should not be very difficult to convince her to work with me.:_

It would mean dusting off his former disguise as "Solas the Hedgemage," a wandering elven apostate of no particular background, with a harmless fascination for the Fade and the ancient elves. It would, of course, neatly explain what he was doing in the Crossroads in the first place, and why he was so interested in the other eluvians... he'd have to deceive her by pretending mere scholarly interest, but as long as he found way to engage her curiosity, he was certain he could come up with ways to explain some of the other anomalies that were bound to crop up as he picked the locks on the other eluvian and brought them under his own control.


	5. Chapter 5

It was hours later, and the mage on the other side of the mirror had reached the brink of exhaustion even aided by periodic boost from her own blood magic. When she finished with the last anchor, attuning all of the spell-web hubs to their respective anchors locking the resonance into place and the last spell-web came online, Solas gave a great heave with his power, flooding the main web. To his great satisfaction the anchors and their spell-hubs came fully online, anchoring the warp-gate in place and settling the grid. The mirror itself flashed brilliantly, momentarily flooding the room with light almost like a lightning strike. The silver-glass of the mirror, until that point crackled and seamed with shattered edges, warped and twisted, first inward and then outward, rippling like the surface of a pond as the warp-gate in the center adjusted space-time around it and fell into place. When it settled, it was one, whole, seamless piece that hummed softly with quiet efficiency.

 _:A task well done,:_ he allowed himself a small sense of satisfaction.

He still had all of the sub-grids stranded off the hubs to repair, but now that the main task was complete, he could handle the rest at leisure.

 _:In fact...:_ he thought, realizing that the mage on the other side of the mirror had been so surprisingly efficient with her power that he was feeling better than he had expected to. _: I can at least begin the task right now.:_

He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling to mind a spel that probably had not been seen for centuries in modern Thedas, and summoned a three-dimensional image of the outline of the complex spellwebs of the eluvian's core spells delineated in lines of brightly colored light. A spell-web interface, an image of the main interweavings of the hub and all of the strands that led to its sub-grids, lit up and hovered in the air before him. He concentrated magic on the tips of his fingers and attuned them to the spell interface so that he could interact with the spellwebs, then started on the first strands off the main hub, tapping on the sub-grid with a finger to bring it into focus. Being a very small part of a design that was much, much larger, Solas he magnified it for a closer look by bringing his two index fingers together in the center and pulling them slowly apart until he'd reached the magnification he wanted.

 _:Hmm, the mirror is whole, all that remains is to reconnect the strands of the spellswebs,:_ he thought. _:And to replace those parts that that had deteriorated and decayed over the time the mirror has been inactive.:_

Solas expertly examined each aspect of his first grid by turning the image that hovered in the air before him this way and that to look at all of the angles. A few taps on each node and flicks to the sides brought up separate work-scrolls on the periphery of his main interface that told him the functions of each node in detail. He quickly highlighted all of the areas that had been physically separated by cracks, "lifting" them away from their places in the grids and re-creating that particular section of the grid on another three-dimensional interface to one side. He studied each one carefully for flow, for the values in its original functions, and for how they could be expected to interact with other functions before he began work on painstakingly rebuilding the node.

:The sloppy magic used out in the rest of Thedas hasn't utilized these old skills,: he thought as he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his ability with node-building had grown rusty in the time he had not practiced it. :It may take a bit longer than i had at first anticipated to bring the eluvan back to fully functionality again.:

 _:The grids with mere single function nodes on it are relatively easy_ ,: he remembered, his old prowess slowly starting to return to him the longer he worked at it. _:It's the grids that have secondary and tertiary spell-grids in them that are the real challenge.:_

A small icon in ancient elven appeared in one corner paired with a progress bar that slowly filled up the further along his spell-weaving went letting him know how much closer he was to completion.

:A long task but not impossible. It's work I feel I'm better suited to. If nothing else, at least it's quieter.:

He tried not to think with wistful longing of a round room covered in plaster, a mosaic fraught with hidden meaning and the soothing smell of paint, turpentine, and ancient parchment papers.

* * *

Merrill crawled over to her sleeping pallet, drenched in sweat and feeling like she'd tried to swim across the ocean. She had not been expecting, when she'd sank her power into the eluvian that morning, that it was actually going to up and decide it wanted to work finally, after sitting there in the corner of her room looking vaguely creepy for so many years. She most certainly hadn't been expecting to be sucked into a casting of such power and complexity it had almost felt like it was alive.

 _:Truly, the elves of ancient Arlathan must have worked wonder_ s!: she thought to herself.

She pulled out a few oat and fruit meal-bars from her travel pack and ate them slowly, trying to keep herself from wolfing it down in her hunger. Now that she'd disengaged herself from the spell, she felt ravenous! She was also cold, which told her that she'd skirted dangerously close to draining her energy too far.

 _:Still, it seems to have worked out for the best,:_ she thought looking in satisfaction at the eluvian, which now hummed with power a glowed a very soft, dim whitish light. The flat surface of the mirror scrolled up with characters of ancient vallan she'd never seen before and did not know the meaning of. More proof that there had been so much lost.  To her further puzzlement, beside some the ancient elven characters appeared strange, thick lines that slowly grew longer until the image paused, and then the lettering moved up once again. Merrill watched it in uncomprehending fascination, but was too tired to try to go digging through it.

 _:Besides, the mirror doesn't seem to like it when I go and try to tinker with it. I suppose I wouldn't like it much either if someone tried to tinker with me._ :

Her eyes drifted slowly closed and she was on the edge of sleep in no time.

_:Who knows, maybe it will only a little while longer, and I'll be able to visit the other side of the eluvian!:_

Her hear fluttered with fear and elation. It was natural she'd be excited to see the successful end result of all of her hard work, but it was a fact she didn't like to admit to that her motives for working so hard and so stubbornly had not been as pure as she had always led everyone to believe.

Of course she wanted to return a precious magical artifact of immense power to her people, but if it had been only that as her motive, she probably would have given up long ago, when her Keeper and Clan were in danger. Pure restoration and a desire to serve had only been half of her motivation. The other half... was personal.

Tamlen, her clan-mate that had entered the eluvian when he and Mahariel had stumbled across it so man years ago, could still be on the other side of the mirror. Tamlen... her beloved. She had been young when she'd first realized she loved him, and she had never told anyone. It was not, precisely, forbidden for a member of the clan to lifebond with their Keeper, but it was highly frowned upon. Plus, her Keeper disliked it when her First was distracted and romance was definitely a distraction. As they'd got older, Tamlen had flirted with her covertly. Whispering promises of someday and secretly bringing her flowers whose meanings were endearments in the old tongue. Their's had been a romance of covert glances and shared smiles, of stolen hours and chaste, loving kisses. Loosing him had broke her heart, and ignited an unquenchable fire within her to find him by any means necessary.

 _:The ancient elves had used to go into uthenera, it's not impossible that he's still alive, somehow, somewhere, on the other side of the eluvian,_ : she told herself.

She refused to believe her beloved might be dead, and just the thought of him, lost out there somewhere, alone, friendless, with no-one looking for him and no beacon to guide him home.

_:This might be the first step towards redeeming myself. And also--!:_

It still seemed like a bit of a girlish daydream to her, but there was always the possibility!

_:Perhaps, through the eluvian, I will find a way to reach it, to reach Shan Ril'an.:_

The tales of a lost elven colony, far away in another part of the world entirely, accessible only through the Eluvian, were considered to be mere stories to entertain children with, even by other Dalish elves. Merrill had always hoped, in her heart of hearts, that by restoring the Eluvian, she might find a way to rediscover the lost colony of the elves. Surely, if they had lived to far away from Tedas, they had to have survived. Having not had thier homes overrun by the Shemlen, and their rights and properties stripped from them, plus having no Blights or Archdemons, they surely had to be better off than her people or any of the rest of the elves in Thedas!

 _:Who knows, perhaps they're even still immortal like the ancient elves of Arlathan!_ : she thought.

Elven tales said that the elves of Shan Ril'an lived forever in peace and harmony, that they never knew war or misery or sorrow. Tales also said they all lived in magical palaces of singing crystal, with little golem-like servants made of magic that attended to their every need, and that they and ate honey-fruit all day and spent their time in magical research, expanding the collected wisdom in their (supposedly massive) Great Libraries. Some claimed that they rode on the backs of magical flying halla and could wander into the Fade at will.

Merrill not only wanted to see such a wonderful place for herself, she wanted to bring her Clan there with her so that they could be safe, far away from the ever-present threat of the Shemlen and their wars.

 _:If I could bring my Clan there and keep them safe..._ : she thought. : _Surely I should bring every other elf to keep them safe as well!:_

There was unrest among the city elves, this she knew. The Kirkwall elves had been on the brink of open revolt because the shem who lived in the city treated them worse than usual. It seemed that when the Shem felt miserable, they made themselves feel better by making the lives of those they felt were beneath them even more of a trial. The Kirkwall humans had influenced their Chantry into denying the Alienage the aid they were supposed to be entitled to by saying that "there was a greater need elsewhere" and that "the elves can take care of themselves." Life in the Kirkwall Alienage was already difficult, and the aftermath of the destruction of the Chantry had made it even worse, food was scarce, and many homes had been destroyed by flaming debris making for both fires and loss of life. The pro-tem Ruling Council had ordered Aveline and her guards to seal off the Gate and allow no entry nor egress from the Alienage, fearing that the elves would riot if they were allowed to leave.

She knew that there was unrest in the other cities too. The stone that Anders had cast into the pool to aid his own cause had not only created ripples for the mages alone. Many of the Alienages in the other cities were in open revolt, rallying behind "mi'en harel," a reminder that even a "short blade" must be respected. They saw the treatment of thier cousins in Kirkwall, and, likely fearing that such treatment was all too likely to happen to them, had begun to protest. They arranged marches through the streets that were supposed to be for Shemlen use only shouting out demands for equal treatment and legal protections, and they chained themselves to the faces of public buildings and made as big a rucus as they could, some of them ended up martyring themselves for their cause when the guards were called in. Many of the shemlen in charge of the cities had called for Purges, which only led to greater unrest in all of the remaining cities, as the elves in the alienages feared they would share the same fate as their cousins in the Purged cities.

 _:The Dalish, if they are aware of it... and that's a pretty **big** if,:_ she admitted. : _Do nothing to aid the cause of my city friends_.:

But the Dalish, she had heard, had their own problems now. The wilds were no longer the safe-haven for her kin that they had always been. The rifts had unleashed a plague of benal'ras elgar or Endarkened spirits (which the shem referred to as demons, but the elves knew were merely poor spirits that, through likely no fault of ther own, had become corrupted by the world and thier violent "birth" into it). The wilds were crawling with endarkened now, and the Keepers had their hands full trying to protect their clans from them. She had heard that Sabrae Clan was no longer the only clan among the Dalish to exist without the protection of Keeper or First as the Endarkened had claimed the lives of those who fought agains them.

 _:If I could find the location of Shan Ril'an, and find a way to bring my people there, they would at last be safe!:_ Merrill thought hopefully.

Safe not only from the ever-present threat of attack by the Shem, but also from the new hordes of endarkened spirits that were flooding out of the rifts everywhere. They could live their lives in peace for a change, perhaps even rediscover new knowledge of the Old Ways!

: _And... maybe my clan might even forgive me?:_

She didn't want to let herself hope for that. Such a hope would hurt her too deeply if it were crushed. What she had done, even with the best of reasons, was unforgivable. If she could make them safe, that was enough. Fulfilling her duty as the Keeper she should have been was enough. Asking for forgiveness on top of that was too much.

Merrill looked at he Eluvian with the ancient characters of elvhen vallan scrolling down it in strange ways. Maybe it was all a vain hope, yet another dead end, but... she couldn't help but hope that maybe this time everything would turn out differently, maybe this time, she'd do it right.

**Author's Note:**

> The moment I first talked to Solas on my first play-through I immediately developed a beautiful head-cannon between Merrill and Solas, sadly the end of the game broke my heart by breaking up my pairing... so one works with what one has.


End file.
